


Safe In My Arms

by mihrsuri



Category: DUANE Diane - Works, Star Trek - Various Authors, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Ensemble Cast, Introspection, friendship feels, trauma aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deanna goes through the ways she copes. (Title from a song by Plumb)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe In My Arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rocknlobster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocknlobster/gifts).



> This fic is set after the events of my very favourite TNG universe novel (Dark Mirror by Diane Duane) but you don't need to have read the book to be able to read this (all that needs to be known is that Deanna went undercover in the Mirror Universe and it was A Bad Time).

  


  


She feels something untwist inside her stomach when the Enterprise slips back into inhabited space no matter how much mental work she had done to tell herself that it was fine, that she and Geordi were home. There was a difference between knowing and  _ knowing _ . 

  


So she's sitting in her quarters composing and deleting a reply to her mother's latest message for the tenth time in an hour because she has absolutely no idea what to say, even though Deanna knows what she can't say. 

  


In the end she hisses in frustration, shuts the message and makes herself go through some tasks - shower, brushing and braiding her hair, tidying her quarters, clean clothes and ordering a hot chocolate from the replicator that she sits and sips carefully letting the warmth and sweetness sink into her bones. 

  


I'm here, Deanna thinks. I'm here and I'm not  _ her _ . I'll never be her because I'll destroy myself before I'll let that happen. 

  


Perhaps strangely that helps her feel better as she finishes the last of the hot chocolate and stretches. 

  


-

  


The next few days Deanna firmly makes herself catch up on paperwork, on appointments that she'd had to reschedule and the various bits and pieces of work that had built up. Eventually she knows she'll talk it out but right now she knows she's too fragile, too brittle to be open in the way she needs (if there's one thing she's learned to tell her patients it's that it's okay to only talk when you yourself are ready to and on your terms alone). 

  


Her friends are wonderful though - Beverly goes with her to dance class, Geordi will give her a hug and a smile, Data invites her to spend time with his cat, Will makes her a hot drink for every staff meeting and Worf offers to teach her a complicated combat dance. But none of them force her to talk or to give more than she can. 

  
It's beautiful. And it's nothing  _ she _ has, thinks Deanna with a certain satisfaction. Not that she'd value it if she did.  


End file.
